After the “Night of the Long Knives”, René Lévesque had so inflamed PQ militants that they had decided to drop sovereignty-association in favor of independence without even going through a referendum. At the end of the December 1981 congress, the founding father had come within a hair’s breadth of resigning, and the PQ was on the verge of explosion.
CAQ activists obviously have nothing to do with the PQ of the time. No matter what François Legault says, whether to move forward or back, they agree. Never would Mr. Lévesque have dared to dream of such docility.
But it is much more difficult to make an entire population obey the finger and the eye. He cannot be expected to follow politicians in all the often confusing strategic detours they take. The pretense escapes him.
At last weekend’s convention, the prime minister did not go with a dead hand: the very existence of the Quebec nation would be threatened by immigration that Ottawa refuses to regulate. If nothing changes, it’s only a matter of time before French disappears, said François Legault. Even during the referendum campaigns, whether in 1980 or 1995, the sovereigntist leaders had not dramatized to this extent.
We understand very well that Mr. Legault wants to give himself a balance of power in the face of the Trudeau government’s intransigence, but we will especially remember from his remarks that immigration in its current form represents a mortal danger for French Quebec.
The Prime Minister will repeat this speech before, during and after the election campaign. It is already established that once re-elected (which is beyond doubt), the CAQ government will launch a major educational operation to explain the ins and outs of the immigration problem. On the other hand, we seem to find the formula of the “States General” a little pompous, so that the exercise could be more akin to the Bélanger-Campeau commission, which the Bourassa government had set up after the rejection of the agreement. of Meech Lake.
In Mr. Bourassa’s mind, it was a question of calming things down by offering an outlet for the anger provoked by the failure of Meech; On the contrary, Mr. Legault wants to mobilize the population to force the hand of Ottawa.
Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind. Even when all the precautions are taken to frame the debate, the question of immigration remains eminently explosive and can cause serious slippages which will inevitably be blown up by those who ask nothing better than to be able to accuse Quebec of intolerance and of racism.
If a collective reflection on immigration and the future of French is necessary, the legal challenges to “Law 21” on secularism and “Law 96” on language are likely to favor amalgams that do not contribute not to the serenity of the debate.
Opening Pandora’s box always presents a risk. In the eyes of the Prime Minister, the problem is Justin Trudeau and his centralizing policies denying the specificity of Quebec, but it is rather the immigrants themselves who could easily become so in the minds of the population.
On the eve of elections, it is in order to demand a “strong mandate”, but Mr. Legault knows very well that the other will not give in, even if the CAQ elects 100 deputies. He suggests that the other Canadian provinces would also like to see their immigration powers increased. It is possible, but they have many other priorities: Quebec is the only one for whom the question is existential.
Some hope that Ottawa will be more flexible once Mr. Trudeau is gone, but whoever replaces him will not want to go beyond the agreement negotiated in 1991. Immigration is too closely linked to citizenship for a sovereign state to abandon its regulation; if you want this power, you have to be sovereign.
Moreover, the good souls of English Canada would no doubt take a very dim view of leaving immigrants at the mercy of people who do not hesitate to evade the Charter of Rights in the name of their so-called identity.
Mr. Legault still refuses to speculate on what would happen if Ottawa refused to bend, but he assures that he will “never” hold a referendum on sovereignty. This is a word best avoided in politics. It is true that it is also better to arrive at the river before crossing the bridge, but it could be very windy on the way to it.